Addicted After All

by Krista Ritchie

  His hand freezes on the doorknob. “Lil…” His voice is more serious. “You know it’s not—”

  I almost pounce on him to cover his mouth with my palm. “Don’t say it’s not real.” It’s just as bad as saying fairies aren’t real. One of them will die as a result. We have to keep the faith.

  He patiently waits for me while my hand is pressed against his pink lips, but his amber eyes glimmer like I’m really beautiful in this moment.

  “Hogwarts is real,” I say. “You know, we can go to Universal Studios and visit Diagon Alley.” Sometimes we even head over to the UK to visit the castle where the movies were filmed.

  Realization crosses his face, and I drop my hand. “Right. Of course, love.”

  “Well,” I continue on, “I want to wait for Maximoff. When he’s a little older. Maybe three or four. We could take a trip together.”

  Lightness bursts in his eyes, something that lifts me ten feet in the air. I am soaring inside. “He can’t be sorted until he’s eleven,” Lo reminds me.

  “Okay,” I nod, knowing that’s the rules. I’m a proud Hufflepuff. Lo is a bitter Slytherin. And together I kind of wonder what our child will be.

  “Then it’s a plan,” Lo says, and I glow at his words. Maybe we shouldn’t be making them so far ahead. Anything could happen. The worst could strike us cold.

  But I choose to see the better future.

  The one I want.

  And if it doesn’t come to pass…

  I’ll deal with it then.

  “It worked,” Lo tells me, his eyes flitting over my features. He turns the knob of our door and walks backwards, into the dimly lit room.

  “What?” I follow him like our bodies are connected, like a short rope is hooked from my waist to his. I will wander with Loren Hale through every moment, good and bad.

  Very softly, he says, “You believe in yourself again.”

  Yes. I smile. I think I do.

  { 31 }

  LOREN HALE

  “Lo,” Lily cries out while I thrust inside of her from behind. On our sides, I have her leg pulled over my waist. She clenches the red sheets, her mouth open as she trembles into these blinding sensations.

  My cock throbs. Badly. Dying for a release, to thrust hard and come inside of her. My whole body is coated in sweat. And my nerves light on fire as I keep this deep rhythm. Jesus.

  “Harder,” she whimpers, her feet arching.

  I can’t go harder than this. Even if I want to just as much as her. She’s thin, gangly and carrying our child. I feel like if I’m any rougher than my pace now, I’ll break her in two. The closer she is to her due date, I also worry about inducing labor.

  Block it out.

  I just want to fuck my girlfriend. I push deeper, which causes her whole body to quake. And I hold this position, pulling her leg higher. My eyes almost roll back.

  “Lo, Lo, Lo!” She reaches out for me, but since I’m behind her, she can only claw at the sheets. She moans into the mattress, and I let out a ragged noise.

  I make the most of my climax, staying inside as she pulses around my cock. About a couple minutes later, I pull out and kiss her on the lips. She’s smiling as she rolls onto her back, but her eyes are starting to flutter closed.

  I prop an elbow on the pillow, staring down at her. “That good?” I say, drawing circles on her belly.

  “Mmmhhmm.”

  I feign surprise. “She can’t even talk.” It’s rare that morning sex will put Lily back to sleep, and I suspect it’s because we went at it all night. We’re making up for the six weeks where we can’t do anything. I enjoy it as much as Lil.

  Others in the house don’t. Rose heard us from down the hall last night and actually texted me to “put my dick away” and check in with Lily’s therapist.

  She may be worried that I’m pushing Lily to a bad place, but I’m not. I can tell when she’s compulsive, and I don’t feed into that. I shut it down when it happens. I do understand Rose’s concern though. She can’t know what I do with Lily in bed, so she just speculates.

  “Mmm…” Lily says again, her eyes closing entirely.

  I smile, watching her enter a peaceful sleep. I sit up and grab my phone off the night stand, checking my email really quickly. I scan through them and stop on something Lil sent me from 5 p.m. yesterday, before we had sex.

  The subject line: Don’t be mad! But you need to see this.

  My smile fades. I glance at her, her chest rising and falling, and I lift the sheet and comforter up to her collarbones. She barely stirs.

  And then I click in to see a picture of me and Lil from Hale Co.’s fourth of July party. Lily is passing me her corndog with a big goofy smile. It’s one of the cutest pictures I’ve ever seen, and I look infatuated by her.

  She pasted in a link to a Celebrity Crush article. I take the risk and click it too. The headline: Lily Calloway Shares a Hotdog with Loren Hale on July 4th by Wendy Collins.

  I skim the article. Wendy talks about the rumors concerning me, Ryke, Lily and my child. Other than that, she just says it’s ironic that Lily is passing me a hotdog.

  I wish Lily wouldn’t read this shit. And I return to Lil’s original email and see that she typed a message to me: I thought it was a nice picture of us. Right?

  My emotions just seesawed in the span of two minutes. I’m back to smiling. “Yeah, Lil,” I whisper, my gaze flitting to her as she sleeps.

  I don’t trust her fully. I can’t. I end up going through my phone’s history to see what she was up to yesterday evening. My stomach drops. Tons of Celebrity Crush articles, Twitter, Tumblr—shit. I scope out those. No porn. Just television fandom stuff. She also Google searched “when should I take a paternity test” since it’s something we’ve mentioned to silence the rumors about Ryke. I don’t want to think about it right now.

  I almost shut off the phone, but it buzzes.

  Are you up? I need to talk to you. I’m in the kitchen. – Connor

  Instead of texting back, I just carefully climb out of bed and put on drawstring pants before I leave.

  { 32 }

  LOREN HALE

  After walking down the hallway, I descend the stairs, skipping a couple steps at a time, and then I enter the large clean kitchen.

  In khaki shorts and a navy collared shirt, Connor pours himself a cup of coffee, no dark circles under his eyes or any visible signs of exhaustion. It’s already been four weeks since Jane was born and he’s a pro. “Should I expect to be as well rested as you?” I ask him, heading to a cupboard.

  He turns around while I search for cereal. “Your normal sleep cycle is ten hours,” he reminds me. “Mine is six.”

  “Noted.” All I see is Ryke’s granola cereal on the shelf, so I take out the box. “What’d you need to talk about?” I open the fridge and grab the milk.

  “I want you to hear this from me before it appears anywhere else.”

  I slow my actions, not frozen in place, but more cautious of this conversation. I wrack my brain for the subject matter, and I come up blank. “Yeah, okay,” I say, pouring milk in my bowl. I put the cereal back and wait for him to speak.

  But in a rare moment, he has trouble producing words.

  I stop moving and just lean against the counter, eating my cereal unhurriedly. “I can handle whatever it is,” I remind him. “Is it Lily?” The granola lumps in my throat. I drink some of the milk to wash it down.

  “No,” he says quickly. He stands opposite me, cupping his coffee, and his blue eyes flit up to mine. “It’s about me.”

  I frown and set my spoon back in the bowl. “Are you getting shit at Cobalt Inc. for the Mexico stuff?”

  “When I kissed you?” he says with the tilt of his head.

  I flash a half-smile. “I could’ve kissed you, you know.”

  “But you didn’t. I kissed you,” he says easily. “And no, I’m not getting flak from anyone directly, and I couldn’t care less about rumors.”

  “Really? The Connor Coba
lt that I first met was all about his reputation.”

  “My reputation has superseded anything I envisioned back then. It’d take more than a dare in Mexico to hurt it…” He sips his coffee. “You don’t need to worry how people perceive me. It’s something I’ve micromanaged my whole life. I’m equipped to deal with it now.”

  “So what is it then?” I ask outright.

  “It’s…” He stops short and lets out a laugh. “I almost never explain this to anyone…most people wouldn’t view me the way I’d want them to. They wouldn’t really understand. So I just keep it to myself.”

  He looks up at the ceiling as he collects his thoughts.

  And he starts by saying, “I admire certain qualities in almost every person, but I don’t think like everyone else. My ideas and beliefs would be considered strange, and I’ve lived by the notion that I understand me, even if everyone else sees someone lesser, someone…they need. But as long as I know who I am, nothing else matters.”

  I don’t understand completely, and off my confusion, he keeps explaining.

  “I manipulate people’s emotions. I’ve been with different people because they needed someone to love them and I needed something from them. Rose used to call me an ‘immoral asshole’—I wouldn’t disagree. I’ve never claimed to be moral.” He stands straighter and adds, “If you look closely at the things I say, you’ll see more of me.”

  I process all of his words, but I can’t hone in on the details, the significant parts of what he just said. All I wonder is if he’s manipulated me before. If he saw a guy that craved love, in almost any form, and he took advantage of that. We’ve been down this road before, and I can’t even remember what I told myself to let it go, to accept it and move on.

  “I don’t know…” I say quietly, the bowl of cereal cold in my hand.

  I can tell that he’s struggling discussing this with me. Maybe he fears that I’ll take it the wrong way and hate him for it. I’m trying to be as open-minded as he is with me.

  He sets his coffee on the counter. “I’m never gender specific. I told you that I’ve been with different people.”

  It starts clicking. “You’ve kissed a guy before me,” I mention. I’ve never brought it up. I didn’t want to make anything awkward, and I was waiting for this moment—for him to just tell me parts of his past. I try not to pry into people’s lives. Anyway, it means more when they’re willing to share on their own.

  He nods. “Do you remember during the reality show, we were all asked if we’ve been with a man?”

  “Yeah, I remember that interview.”

  “I answered it differently than you and Ryke. I said that many people want to be with me.”

  I didn’t think much of it. I just thought it was Connor being conceited, but I’m recognizing that it’s a lot more than that. “Are you bisexual?” I ask.

  “I believe in attraction between people. To me, heterosexuality, homosexuality, bisexuality—they’re just terms and constructs that people have built over the years.” He meets my eyes. “Like boxes that we have to fit in. I don’t fit into a box, Lo. I don’t want to fit in one.”

  It’s not as surprising as I thought it’d be. Maybe because I’ve never classified Connor as anything before. “Have you been attracted to a guy?”

  He shrugs like it’s not a big deal. I guess it isn’t. “Many kinds of people interest me,” he says. “But I’ve never been more attracted to someone than I have Rose. And that won’t ever change.”

  “Does she know?”

  His lips curve in a grin. “Of course. She’s known my stance on this since I was sixteen.”

  I’d say those two have the strangest relationship, but I’m codependent with my sex addict girlfriend. “So are you worried something’s going to get out in the media?” He started this whole conversation off with a fear of that.

  “Like I said, I’ve done things in the past…and not everything may stay under the rug. I just wanted you to know where I’m coming from before the media starts twisting things.”

  I want to ask if he’s had sex with a guy. It’s…weird to think about.

  He must read my expression because he says, “I’ve fucked men. Not always because I liked them.”

  It’s a lot to take in, but he’s not much different than the guy I’ve always known. It’s something he proclaimed moments ago: If you look closely at the things I say, you’ll see more of me. He’s been saying all of these things for years, and subliminally, I’ve been accepting him as he is. Even if I couldn’t see all of him.

  “For what it’s worth,” I tell Connor, “it’s kind of extraordinary you can transcend sexual orientations. You’re like an amoeba.”

  “Amoebas are asexual,” he says. “I’m more like a god.”

  I put my bowl on the counter and slow clap.

  He grabs his coffee and raises it to me with a smile.

  I nod to him. “Have you ever lied before and just said you were gay or straight?”

  “All the time,” he says without missing a beat. “Lily even asked me once if I was gay, and instead of getting into it, I assured her that I liked women. I knew that Lily was Rose’s sister, and I needed Lily to want me to be with Rose.”

  Because Rose loves her sisters and she’d value Lily’s opinion. “That’s fucked up, love.”

  “Immoral,” Connor says, pointing to his chest.

  Footsteps sound on the stairs, and Connor and I instantly go quiet. I return to my bowl of cereal and he refills his coffee. Ryke breaches the doorway with a hardened, unshaven jaw and unkempt hair.

  “Don’t fucking stop talking on my account,” he says, his voice gruff like he just woke up.

  I crane my neck to see the oven clock behind Connor. “It’s already noon.”

  “It’s Saturday,” Ryke refutes, opening the cupboard. He doesn’t work, and he rock climbs on random days, so I have no idea when he’s going to wake up at the crack of dawn or sleep in. I bet Connor can predict him though. “And you’re eating breakfast, so why harp on me?”

  “Someone didn’t get laid last night,” I say.

  He shoots me a dark look while he grabs his box of granola cereal. “It’s a little hard getting a girl off when you have a baby wailing every five fucking minutes.”

  Connor pipes in, “Every five minutes? Do you exaggerate about your climbing times too?”

  Ryke flips him off, but Connor still passes him a bowl for his cereal and Ryke accepts it.

  When Ryke glowers with sunken eyes, he appears more serious. “Look, Daisy already has sleep problems. She doesn’t need a baby adding to that. I can have a bad fucking night’s sleep fine, but hers just pile up.”

  When he pours his cereal, a couple pieces of granola hit the bowl and then the grainy dust plumes like flour. He reached the bottom of the box.

  He slowly turns to glare at me and my breakfast, which was the last of his cereal apparently.

  “It tastes like cardboard,” I tell him. “Honestly, I don’t know how you can eat this regularly.”

  “Then why the fuck are you eating it, man?” he growls in distress.

  “Because it’s the only cereal left in the house and I was hungry,” I defend. “Buy some Cheerios or Frosted Flakes like a normal person.”

  “There’s too much sugar in—you know what, fucking eat it. If you have the shits, that’s fucking karma for you.”

  I practically finished the cereal before he walked into the kitchen, but I’ve eaten it before fine. It doesn’t contain that much fiber.

  Ryke retrieves the orange juice from the fridge instead. “Daisy and I are moving to the basement tonight.”

  I’m surprised it’s taken him four weeks to reach this decision.

  “You can take the master on this floor,” Connor says. “It’s vacant.”

  Ryke shakes his head. “Rose still uses the closet space, and Daisy doesn’t want to take that from her.”

  “Just have a baby,” I banter, setting my bowl in the sink. “Then yo
u can justify getting shit sleep.” I catch sight of a Celebrity Crush magazine by the coffee pot, something I’m sure Lily bought. I pick it up to trash it.

  Ryke retorts, “That’s not going to happen any time soon.”

  My brows rise, realizing he didn’t discount it entirely. “You want kids?”

  “Not any time soon,” he emphasizes this point. “I haven’t even been with her for a year yet, anything can happen.” I watch his features darken, and he knocks the empty cereal box over, just frustrated. Hale Co. is putting strain on his relationship. I can tell he’s dreading the “anything can happen” future.

  I head to the pantry to toss the magazine, and before I do, I catch one of the smaller headlines on the cover: [POLL] Who makes the better mother: Lily Calloway or Rose Cobalt?

  Great. Like Lily hasn’t been comparing herself more to Rose as the weeks go by. It’s not healthy. Rose has faults, but they’re much different than Lily’s, and any way you look at it—Lily somehow always falls short in comparison. At least in terms of motherhood.

  Which is just shit.

  Has anyone heard the crap that comes out of Rose’s mouth about kids? Not really. The reality show didn’t show most of it, and the interviews that we do (from Samantha’s persistence to keep us relevant) are usually censored. Meaning the Calloway’s publicists will tell the journalists not to ask Rose about kids. Because Rose has no filter and will probably call them monsters to the entire goddamn world.

  She even calls Jane a little gremlin from time to time. Oddly, it does sound affectionate in an “ice-queen slowly thawing” kind of way, but I don’t think the general public would pick up on that.

  I open the article, just to see the results of the poll and torture myself. Maybe Lily is rubbing off on me.

  Who makes the better mother?

  Lily: 46%

  Rose: 54%

  My blood goes from a boil to a simmer. It’s not a landslide like I thought. I check above the poll, and realize they labeled the girls with their pros and cons. I scan Lily’s first.

  Con: sex addict, in a three-way relationship (rumored), boyfriend is an alcoholic